It is uncontroversial that humans can represent possibilities, but it is debated what this claim amounts to. Under broad views of modal cognition, many representational and reasoning systems represent possibilities at multiple levels of cognitive architecture. Under narrow views of modal cognition, there exists a special kind of higher-level modal thought, that can be measured with purpose built non-verbal modal cognition tasks. Here we ask whether object tracking mechanisms that are assumed to lack the higher-level narrow modal capacity, show behavioral signatures that are assumed to require it. We find signature of modal representation in one task, but not another. The finding suggests that there is no clear difference between tasks that tap broad and narrow modal cognition, and invites a reassessment of the evidence for the latter.

Authors:

Gabor Brody: Brown University; Peter Mazalik: Johns Hopkins University; Roman Feiman: Brown